Facebook's News Feed To Feature Less Content From Pages

Are you bothered by too much content from Facebook pages on your News Feed or do you happen to manage a Facebook page of your own? Depending on your answer to that question, Facebook either has some good or some bad news for you. Namely, in an update to its News Feed algorithm that will roll out globally in the coming weeks, the company will change the ratio of content from your friends and pages that you see on your Facebook home page. More specifically, you'll soon see less content from pages you liked and more content from your Facebook friends. These changes will most significantly impact News Feeds of people with many friends and reach of pages whose content isn't shared a lot.

As the company explained in a yesterday's press release, these changes were prompted by the fact that a lot of its users were complaining about missing their friends' Facebook stories, especially important stuff like engagement and pregnancy announcements. It's worth noting that this algorithm tweak won't exactly eliminate posts from pages from users' News Feed but will instead make their friends' posts a priority. So, you'll still see content from pages you liked on your feed if you scroll down long enough. As for managers of Facebook pages, they can expect to see a dip in their pages' reach in the coming days. The company also noted that pages whose content is shared a lot won't be significantly impacted by the upcoming News Feed update. All of these changes may come as a surprise to people who have criticized Facebook in recent years for prioritizing monetization over their users' interest as this update seems to be precisely the opposite of that approach.

In related news, Facebook recently started pushing custom News Feed categories which are designed to additionally customize the user experience of the most popular social network on the planet. The US company has also recently faced accusations on censoring certain conservative news sources on its News Feed. While Facebook has adamantly denied any Trending Stories censorship, it did admit to using the so-called "news curators" which may have been too biased to do their jobs.

Dominik started at AndroidHeadlines in 2016 and is the Head Editor of the site today. He’s approaching his first full decade in the media industry, with his background being primarily in technology, gaming, and entertainment. These days, his focus is more on the political side of the tech game, as well as data privacy issues, with him looking at both of those through the prism of Android. Contact him at [email protected]